Thursday, February 19, 2015

optics - Unpolarized light - Why don't light sources then look invisible?




Pardon me if this has been asked before. I was just thinking about how light from a source like the sun is unpolarized. I have two questions:




  1. Is unpolarized light from the sun 100% random? Meaning all wavelengths in the visible spectrum, polarized in all directions? (please correct me if "polarized" is not the right term here)




  2. If that's the case, how do the random waves not cancel each other out, rendering the sun invisible to us when we look at it?





Of course my thinking is flawed, so I'm just wondering what I'm missing. The analogy I could come up with is that waves in the ocean are random (I assume?), yet they still occur. Thanks in advance to anyone who can fix my brain.




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